“I thank you,” he said, acknowledging their salutations.  “We have known each other before.  Fortune and misfortune come to all, and it will be your turns one day.  But up or down, good or ill, we shall not be the worse comrades for having kept the guard and sped the bolt together.”

Then there came one behind him who stood at the door of his chamber, as he was unhelming himself, and said:  “My captain, there stand at the turret stair the ladies Margaret and Maud with a message for you.”

“A message for me—­what is it?” said Sholto, testily, being (and small blame to him) a trifle ruffled in his temper.

“Nay, sir,” said the man, respectfully, “that I know not, but methinks it comes from my lord.”

It will not do to say to what our gallant Sholto condemned all tricksome queans and spiteful damosels in whose eyes dwelt mischief brimming over, and whose tongues spoke softest words that yet stung and rankled like fairy arrows dipped in gall and wormwood.

But since the man stood there and repeated, “I judge the message to be one from my lord,” Sholto could do no less than hastily pull on his doublet and again betake himself along the corridor to the foot of the stair.

When he arrived there he saw no one, and was about to depart again as he had come, when the head of Maud Lindesay appeared round the upper spiral looking more distractedly mischievous and bewitching than ever, her head all rippling over with dark curls and her eyes fairly scintillating light.  She nodded to him and leaned a little farther over, holding tightly to the baluster meanwhile.

“Well,” said Sholto, roughly, “what are my lord’s commands for me, if, indeed, he has charged you with any?”

“He bids me say,” replied Mistress Maud Lindesay, “that, since lamps are dangerous things in maidens’ chambers, he desires you to assist in the trimming of the waxen tapers to-night—­that is, if so menial a service shame not your knighthood.”

“Pshaw!” muttered Sholto, “my lord said naught of the sort.”

“Well then,” said Maud Lindesay, smiling down upon him with an expression innocent and sweet as that of an angel on a painted ceiling, “you will be kind and come and help us all the same?”

“That I will not!” said Sholto, stamping his foot like an ill-tempered boy.

“Yes, you will—­because Margaret asks you?”

"I will not!"

“Then because I ask you?”

Spite of his best endeavours, Sholto could not take his eyes from the girl’s face, which seemed fairer and more desirable to him now than ever.  A quick sob of passion shook him, and he found words at last: 

“Oh, Maud Lindesay, why do you treat thus one who loves you with all his heart?”

The girl’s face changed.  The mischief died out of it, and something vague and soft welled up in her eyes, making them mistily grey and lustrous.  But she only said:  “Sholto, it is growing dark already!  It is time the tapers were trimmed!”